On the Right

New York, May 1—They had a cry-in the other day in Boston, featuring Professor Owen Lattimore. In the impassioned account of the reporter, Mr. Ken O. Botwright of the Boston Globe, “China expert Professor Owen Lattimore broke down and wept in the middle of an address in Boston yesterday when he recalled how he had been persecuted during the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the early 1950s. And many of the 1,900 scholars at an Association for Asian Studies seminar wept in sympathy. . . . When he finished his address, they gave him a five-minute standing ovation that rattled the crystal chandeliers of a Sheraton Boston Hotel ballroom.” And rattled, also, my own memory about the lachrymose Mr. Lattimore.

There is a great deal to weep about, when one reflects on what has happened to China in the past twenty years. We do not know how many people have been tortured and executed, but I have not seen an estimate of under ten million. And, suddenly, we find the Asian scholars, meeting in Boston, and listening to such as Professor O. Edmund Clubb of Columbia, blaming the existing situation in China not on those who had a hand in bringing it on, but on the McCarthy period. Then Mr. Lattimore, sobbing, spoke of “strangers [who] came out of nowhere vowing to stand by me.”

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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New York, May 1—They had a cry-in the other day in Boston, featuring Professor Owen Lattimore. In the impassioned account of the reporter, Mr. Ken O. Botwright of the Boston Globe, “China expert Professor Owen Lattimore broke down and wept in the middle of an address in Boston yesterday when he recalled how he had been persecuted during the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the early 1950s. And many of the 1,900 scholars at an Association for Asian Studies seminar wept in sympathy. . . . When he finished his address, they gave him a five-minute standing ovation that rattled the crystal chandeliers of a Sheraton Boston Hotel ballroom.” And rattled, also, my own memory about the lachrymose Mr. Lattimore.

There is a great deal to weep about, when one reflects on what has happened to China in the past twenty years. We do not know how many people have been tortured and executed, but I have not seen an estimate of under ten million. And, suddenly, we find the Asian scholars, meeting in Boston, and listening to such as Professor O. Edmund Clubb of Columbia, blaming the existing situation in China not on those who had a hand in bringing it on, but on the McCarthy period. Then Mr. Lattimore, sobbing, spoke of “strangers [who] came out of nowhere vowing to stand by me.”